- 1Greek religiontheos — a god
Any deity of the crowded pantheon; a category, not a name.
- 2SeptuagintIsrael's one God
Renders Elohim: the single true God who made heaven and earth.
- 3John 1:1 · c.AD 90The Word was theos
God by nature — the prologue's careful Greek says deity, not 'a god.'
- 4John 20:28'My Lord and my God'
Thomas confesses the risen Jesus as theos — and is not corrected.
- 5Nicaea · AD 325Not a lesser god
Against Arius: Christ is true God, of the very being of the Father.
One word, fenced by the Shema
In the wider Greek world theos was cheap — every city had its gods. Israel took the same word and chained it to a single confession: 'Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.' By the New Testament, theos with the article (ho theos) almost always means the God of Israel. That is the fence that makes John 1:1 explosive.
The Word was God
John writes that the Logos 'was with God, and was God.' He does not say the Word was 'a god' — that would shatter his own monotheism. He uses theos without the article and before the verb precisely to say what the Word IS — God by nature — while keeping him distinct from the Father he is 'with.' Thomas completes the arc at the empty tomb: 'My Lord and my God.'
This single word is the seed of Trinitarian theology: one God (against the nations), yet the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God. Nicaea's homoousios is the Church refusing to let 'theos' mean less for the Son than for the Father.
Where This Word Decides Debates
theos decides the deity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity. The Arian and modern Watchtower readings both stand or fall on John 1:1c and the qualitative force of the anarthrous theos.
When This Word Study Proves Too Much
Avoid the tithēmi etymology (false). Avoid pressing the missing article in John 1:1c into 'a god' — Greek predicate-noun word order, not English article rules, governs the sense. And not every theos is the Father: context distinguishes the persons.